Members of the Tennessee Death Penalty Assessment Team

MEMBERS OF THE TENNESSEE DEATH PENALTY ASSESSMENT TEAM1

Chair, Professor Dwight L. Aarons Professor Dwight Aarons is currently Associate Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee College of Law, where he teaches courses on criminal law, advanced criminal law and the death penalty. Before he began his career in teaching in 1993, Professor Aarons was a Staff Attorney for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and then, he was a law clerk to a judge on that court. Capital punishment is his main area of scholarly interest and activity. In addition to being recognized by the College and the University for his teaching and service activities, Professor Aarons has served on the Implementation Committee of the Tennessee Supreme Court Commission on Racial and Gender Fairness, the Tennessee Bar Association’s Young Lawyers’ Division Commission on Women and Minorities in the Profession, on the executive board of the University’s AAUP chapter, and as a faculty senator in the campus Faculty Senate. He earned his B.A. and J.D. degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles.

W.J. Michael Cody Mr. Cody is currently a partner at the Memphis law firm of Burch, Porter & Johnson PLLC where he practices commercial litigation, white-collar crime and internal investigations, arbitration, mediation and alternative dispute resolution. Mr. Cody has extensive experience in public service, having served as Attorney General for the State of Tennessee from 1984 to 1988, as U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee from 1977 to 1981, and as an At-Large Member of the Memphis City Council from 1975 to 1977. He is a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, the American Bar Association Foundation, and the Tennessee Bar Foundation, as well a former member of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee of U.S. Attorneys, the Judicial Council of the State of Tennessee, and the Tennessee Sentencing Commission. Mr. Cody received his undergraduate degree with distinction as well as an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Rhodes College. He received his J.D. from the University of Virginia.

Kathryn Reed Edge Ms. Edge is a member of the Nashville law firm of Miller & Martin PLLC, where she leads the financial institutions practice. Ms. Edge is former Deputy Commissioner and former General Counsel of the Tennessee Department of Financial Institutions. She is an adjunct faculty member of the Nashville School of Law where she teaches banking law. Ms. Edge is currently a member of the American, Tennessee, and Nashville bar associations, as well as the Tennessee Lawyers Association for Women and the Marion Griffin Chapter of the Lawyers Association for Women. She is Past-President of the Tennessee Bar Association. She also is a member of the Post-Conviction Defender Commission and President of the Board of the Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee and the Cumberlands. Ms. Edge received her undergraduate degree from the George Peabody College at Vanderbilt University, and her law degree from the Nashville School of Law.

1 The affiliations of each member are listed for identification purposes only. Each Team member has acted in his/her personal capacity. The contents and views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect those of any listed affiliations. Jeffrey S. Henry Mr. Henry is the Executive Director at the Tennessee District Public Defenders Conference. Prior to assuming his current position in 2005, Mr. Henry served as the Director of Research and Training with the Tennessee District Public Defenders Conference. Prior to 2001, Mr. Henry served as an assistant public defender in the 16 th Judicial District of the State of Tennessee in Rutherford and Cannon Counties. From 1971 to 1975, Mr. Henry served in the Judge Advocate General’s Corp, U. S. Army. He also served four (4) years as an assistant district attorney general for Rutherford and Cannon Counties from 1976 to 1980. Additionally, Mr. Henry served in the Tennessee Army National Guard for twenty years, serving as full-time legal counsel for the Tennessee National Guard from 1989, until his retirement in 1997 at the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Mr. Henry also has practiced privately, and was an adjunct professor at Middle Tennessee State University. He is Immediate Past Chair of the Criminal Justice Section of the Tennessee Bar Association, and Past-President of the Rutherford- Cannon Bar Association. Mr. Henry is a graduate of the University of Tennessee, where he received both his undergraduate and law degrees.

Judge Gilbert S. Merritt Judge Merritt currently serves as a Senior Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Nashville, Tennessee. He also acts as an advisor to the United States Department of Justice concerning the restoration of Iraq’s judicial system and the relocation of the Iraqi Supreme Court. Prior to his appointment by President Jimmy Carter in 1977, Judge Merritt served as United States Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee, as well as Metropolitan Attorney for the City of Nashville, and as executive secretary for the Tennessee Commission Code. He was also in private practice at the Nashville law firm of Gullett, Steele, Sanford, Robinson & Merritt. He is a graduate of Yale University, and received his LL.B. from Vanderbilt University School of Law, where he was Managing Editor of the Vanderbilt Law Review and Order of the Coif. Judge Merritt also received an LL.M. from Harvard Law School.

Bradley A. MacLean Mr. MacLean is the Assistant Director of The Tennessee Justice Project. He is also of counsel to the Nashville law firm of Stites & Harbison, PLLC, where his practice currently focuses on federal habeas death penalty cases. Mr. MacLean is a member of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals Rules Advisory Committee and is an Adjunct Professor of Law at Vanderbilt Law School where he teaches a course on the death penalty. Mr. MacLean has been named to The Best Lawyers in America and has received other awards and honors, including the Nashville Bar Association’s Liberty Bell Award in 1997 and the Tennessee Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers’ Lionel Barrett Award in 1998. Mr. MacLean holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Stanford University, a M.A. in Education from Emory University, and a J.D. from Vanderbilt Law School where he received the Founder’s Medal for graduating first in his class. William T. Ramsey Mr. Ramsey is a Member of Neal & Harwell PLC in Nashville, where his practice focuses on complex civil and criminal litigation. Mr. Ramsey was a law clerk for the Honorable Harry Phillips of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He is currently President-Elect of the Nashville Bar Association, and a fellow of the Nashville Bar Foundation as well as a member of the American and Tennessee Bar Associations. Mr. Ramsey received his B.S. with high honors from the Georgia Institute of Technology and his law degree from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, where he was a member of the University of Tennessee Law Review and the Order of the Coif. Mr. Ramsey was also the recipient of the Michie Law Publishing Award for graduating first in his law school class.